“Sweden’s highest peak, a glacier on the southern tip of the Kebnekaise mountain, is melting due to record hot Arctic temperatures and is no longer the nation’s tallest point, scientists said on Wednesday.

Sweden’s two highest points are a mountain with two peaks, one covered by a glacier, the other free of ice.

Swedish author Henning Mankell’s settling of accounts, a book called Quicksand, was his written reckoning with a cancer diagnosis. He ranged widely, and lamented that not many of us are remembered for long. His example:

Construction of the Great Wall lasted 1800 years.

“If you think of the work being handed down from father to son that means there were over sixty generations who never saw the end of the work they and their forefathers had been engaged on.”

This makes me less apt to stand in an overnight queue for iPhone version x.xxx.

Common Sense and Whiskey, the blog, is companion to EarthPhotos.com, our collection of 20,000+ photos from 120 countries and territories around the world.

My wife and I live on a horse farm in Young Harris, Georgia, and spend parts of every summer in our tiny cabin on Lake Saimaa in Finland. Because my day job has outfitted me with audio equipment, I am available for studio quality broadcast author interviews via SourceConnect.

As to the increased political chatter here lately, I just can't help it.